Allegoria

Right, well I was lured into watching the 2022 horror movie "Allegoria" because of the interesting cover. Well, that and the fact that it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen.

Had I known that this was an artsy horror anthology, I would have avoided it like the plague. I am not overly much a fan of horror anthologies, as they more often than not tend to be questionable and dubious. And that was also the case with "Allegoria". Yeah, it wasn't a great viewing experience. The short stories, or segments, that make up "Allegoria" were not particularly entertaining. And I have to say that I found it to be a bit over-the-top, as writer and director Spider One (and that name by itself is a warning signal, isn't it?) just tried to be too avantgarde with these short stories.

Something that spoke in favor of "Allegoria", was the fact that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble. That is something I do enjoy when I sit down to watch a movie. The acting performances in "Allegoria" were good enough, despite the fact that the movie as a whole failed to really entertain me.

The special effects in "Allegoria" were actually good, and that did count for something. But it was hardly enough to make up for the shortcomings of the story narratives.

This is definitely not something I would recommend to horror fans. Nor is it something that I will ever return to watch a second time.

My rating of "Allegoria" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.

Allegoria (2022) is a new release I recently watched on Shudder. The storyline follows a group of individuals whose lives are indirectly tied together. Their obsessions are about to manifest demons in or around them that will change their lives forever and flip their lives upside down.

This movie is written and directed by Spider One in his directorial debut and stars John Ennis (Eight Legged Freaks), Krsy Fox (Underworld: Evolution), Tyler Bryan (Frank), Johnny Hawkes (Zombie Strippers) and Bryce Johnson (Darkness Rising).

This movie has a fun soundtrack that reminded me of Clockwork Orange. The opening scene with the teacher was tremendous. I adored the makeup, mask and attire of the burned demon. Very well done. The movie is more intricate and smarter than you may anticipate. The writing is clever and does a great job tying all the short stories together and the end is fairly smart.

Overall this is a slightly above average addition to the horror genre that's worth a viewing. I would score this a 6-6.5/10 and recommend seeing it once.

This is supposed to be (I think) about a bunch of pretentious artists. But what they are saying about art is at the level of what a high school student might tell you. So they are obnoxious and annoying rather than pretentious. I was just happy to see each and every person in this movie die.

Also I agree with the reviewer speaking about the sound quality. Had to turn the volume up almost as loud as my system would go to hear any of the whisper quiet dialogue and then turn it almost all the way down again at ANY sound effect (yes, that includes simple things like closing a door).

I feel like a lot of people are going to try to compare Spider One's directing/writing to Rob Zombie's directing/writing, but I don't think that's necessary. Allegoria is Spider One's first full length movie. Allegoria wasn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but it definitely wasn't great either. I managed to watch the entire thing, hoping that maybe it would get better. It didn't. The writing was pretty light on plot, horror, and excitement. I can imagine Spider One sitting at a table as he was writing this, thinking how every little tale was awesome and scary....but really, the stories didn't have much happening. At all. There were nice little ties between the stories with the characters, but that's about it. Really weak writing. Each story had a shred of horror to it, but barely. The ideas didn't feel fleshed out, the stories felt unfinished, and there was a severe lack of horror to the whole thing. The acting wasn't terrible, I didn't feel like anybody in particular did a bad job. The camera work was fine. The music felt a little trite, lots of intense piano key slams indicating you're supposed to feel terror or suspense. But I never felt terror or suspense. Overall, my biggest disappointment with the movie is that basically nothing happened throughout the whole movie. Just several short stories, one after the other, where some characters do some things and talk for 5-10 minutes, and then it's on to the next. Yawn.

Had to turn on subtitles.. the talking was whisper quiet compared to the blaring, speaker destroying soundtrack.

Some of the stories worked well... others were a bit long winded with no real payoff, nicely linked through out though.

Kinda spooky, mostly boring.